Court allows Guilford County vaccine lawsuit against schools to proceed

A Guilford County family can keep pressing claims that a school-run COVID-19 clinic vaccinated a 14-year-old without consent, leaving school systems and their medical partners exposed to a test of how far parental consent protections reach. The case now turns less on the vaccine itself than on whether a public school and an outside health provider can be held liable when a student is medically treated at school without a parent’s approval.

Emily Happel and her son, Tanner Smith, say Tanner was vaccinated in August 2021 at a Guilford County school clinic operated with Old North State Medical Society, Inc. He was 14 at the time. The vaccination came after a COVID-19 cluster was identified among the Western Guilford High School football team, leading school officials to suspend activities and require testing.

The case has moved through Guilford County Superior Court, where Judge Lora C. Cubbage entered a dismissal order on March 1, 2023, and into the appellate courts as Happel v. Guilford County Board of Education, docketed as COA23-487 on March 5, 2024. The North Carolina Supreme Court heard the dispute on October 23, 2024, and issued its decision on March 21, 2025.

In that ruling, the high court said the federal PREP Act shields the defendants from the battery claim, but it does not bar the family’s state constitutional claims. The court held that the law’s immunity reaches tort injuries, not those claims tied to state constitutional rights. That keeps alive the central argument that parents have a protected role in directing a child’s upbringing and medical decisions, including bodily integrity.

For Guilford County schools, the practical effect is immediate: clinic partnerships with outside medical groups cannot assume federal immunity will end every lawsuit if consent procedures are challenged. The dispute is likely to push school leaders, nurses and partner agencies to look closely at who authorizes student vaccinations, how consent is documented and what safeguards exist when school health services are delivered on campus.

The court record also drew wider attention beyond Guilford County, with amicus briefs filed by Children’s Health Defense, Rep. Neal Jackson and other legislators, and the NC Values Institute. As the case returns for further proceedings, it stands as a North Carolina test of school-system liability, parental consent rules and the constitutional limits on student medical decisions made inside public schools.